Beyonce lost $3.8 million due to illegal downloads

It has been reported that singer, Beyoncé, lost out on $3.8 million during her new self-titled album’s first 10 days of release, due to illegal downloading.

In the period of December 13-23, Beyoncé sold almost a million copies, however the album was also illegally downloaded 240,000 times, resulting in the huge loss of revenue.

Information regarding pirate copies of the rest of the singer’s back catalogue has also been revealed. On December 15, her previous albums were downloaded over 11,000 times – five times more than the day before her latest release. In total Beyoncé’s work has been shared over two million times through BitTorrent file-sharing websites.

Beyoncé debuted at the top of the US Billboard chart, giving the singer her fifth number one album.

The release was a complete surprise to fans, as there had been no publicity beforehand, and the album was simply made available via iTunes.

“I was terrified. I was so scared. I already envisioned like the worst things that could happen,” said Beyoncé when quizzed on the subject.

This is not the first time these tactics have been used this year. Following a secretive recording process, David Bowie made his latest album The Next Day available to stream through iTunes before it’s official release.

Words by Ben Hindle

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